pea·pod's walker is a keyboard & mouse experience — you walk the worlds with the keys and shape the music as you move. On a phone you get the pocket listener: the same worlds, the same people, listening together.
or open peapod.live on a laptop or desktop to walk them yourself.
the short, honest version, last updated 5 september 2026
peapod is a music player you walk through, made by Herne / Maestro Stereo. Walking moves the music. The base game is free for everyone, forever, no ad, no paywall between you and the ground floor. It's early, and it's being built in the open. :)
peapod writes down your way through it, and it starts the moment you walk in. You are not asked to agree to anything on the way past the front door, and there is no box to tick: these documents are here on the splash to be read, and this paragraph is what they say. If you make an account, that is the point where you accept the terms, and you do it deliberately. What gets recorded is what you do: worlds entered and left, how long you listen, where you walk, what you press — including the presses that did nothing, which are the ones that show something is broken — what you unlock, and how things perform. That record is kept whether or not you ever register; while you are signed in, that record carries your username, so one person's journey can be read and the broken thing found. That is the whole reason it exists: no ads, no selling, no profiling for anything outside peapod. No advertising cookie, no fingerprinting, no third-party analytics script. Nothing you type is ever recorded — not a whisper, not a message, not a search; while a text box has the keyboard, peapod does not even keep which key it was. If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, peapod sees it and writes down that it was sent, on the journey's own row, and carries on recording. That is the honest version rather than the quiet one: you can see the disagreement, and the erase button below ends it in one press. Raw journeys are kept at most 30 days; only de-identified totals live longer. You can erase everything at any time, with or without an account. There is also an optional research study in the account panel — off unless you choose it.
Whispers are the little words you send to whoever's near you. They are never written down anywhere, not in the database, not in logs, not in analytics, not in your browser. They pass through the live relay's memory and exist only as pixels: each fades after about 7 seconds. If the live connection isn't available, whispers simply stay off, there is no stored fallback.
Some things are durable on purpose: comments and grass you plant, community posts and chat, direct messages, and your account, name, a securely-hashed password, progress, friends, and anything you make. A whisper is meant to disappear; participation is meant to persist.
A username and a password, nothing else required. No email, no real name, no phone number. Because there is no email, a lost password can mean a lost account: generate recovery codes in the account panel, or attach an email later if you want a safety net. Passwords are stored only as strong one-way hashes. Registering is where you accept these terms, with a box you tick yourself — it is the one moment peapod asks you to agree to anything, and you can read all of this first.
No advertising cookies, no analytics cookies, and no cookie banner needed — nothing peapod stores on your computer is for advertising or for following you anywhere else, so there is nothing a banner would be asking about. The only cookie is the strictly-necessary sign-in session. Your save, your settings and the character you chose live in your own browser's storage; clearing browser data clears them. One more key holds the journey id — a random number, naming nobody, that ties this visit to your last one so a refresh does not read as a new stranger. It is the one the erase button above removes. Every stored key is inventoried publicly in the project's docs/privacy/ folder.
Link worlds play through the official YouTube / SoundCloud / Mixcloud / Apple Music / NTS players, under their terms, nothing is downloaded or re-hosted. Native worlds are published only where the rights are in place, and we act on infringement reports. Some things may later be offered as paid, on top of the free floor; where a lane is still being built, it is a plan, not a promise. Words you write remain yours; the game, its worlds and its characters remain Herne's. peapod is provided as-is, with love and without warranty.
peapod is a calm, ad-free place. If you are young, have a parent or guardian's OK before you make an account or take part. peapod is made by a Romanian company, and in Romania you must be 16 to agree to terms like these yourself; if you are younger, ask a parent before you make an account.
No account needed to be forgotten: the button in what we log above erases everything peapod has recorded about this browser, immediately and for good, and it works for somebody who never signed up. Delete your account yourself in the account panel (it lets you download your data first), or write to stefan@maestrostereo.com and a human will handle it. Your old name stays retired after deletion so nobody can impersonate you.